


Hold Me, Heal Me

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backrubs, Community: ohsam, Fluff and Angst, Gen, OhSam 2015 Fanworks Challenge, Sam Hallucinates, Vomiting, Worried!Dean, bed sharing, hallucinations of Lucifer, protective!Dean, ridiculously high fever, sick!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 08:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3761929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It started with a sneeze. An innocent, innocuous sneeze.</i><br/>Actually, no, Dean corrected himself. It really started with that damn Bogeyman. Yeah, a real honest to Pete, live—well, not alive live—Bogeyman.</p><p> </p><p>Sam gets really sick after a hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me, Heal Me

It started with a sneeze. An innocent, innocuous sneeze.

Actually, no, Dean corrected himself. It _really_ started with that damn Bogeyman. Yeah, a real honest to Pete, live—well, not _alive_ live—Bogeyman.

‘No one’s spotted one in _years_ , Dean,’ Sam said, sounding for all the world like he was about to go see the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre and not one of the oldest monsters from the beginnings of Hunter history. ‘We’ve gotta go.’

Dean wasn’t quibbling over the Bogeyman. In all honesty, he kinda wanted to see it as much as Sam. They’d supposedly been pretty much wiped out in the early nineteen hundreds and the only thing that remained of them were notes and marginalia in Hunter’s journals like his dad’s all over the world. The Lore said Bogeymen were the spirits of children stolen by the faeries who got lost on the journey to the ‘other’ realm and couldn’t find their way back to their bodies. Consequently, they tended to hang out in kids’ rooms and were pretty easy to kill.

So, real Bogeyman? Sure, great. Real Bogeyman in northern Montana in the middle of friggin’ January? Not so much.

‘Sam, I’m not takin’ the Impala into blizzard country in the middle of January. She’s a classic car, not a Snowcat.’

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘It hasn’t gotten below forty all winter, Dean. It’s called Global Warming. Besides, it could be the very last one. You wouldn’t want to say you passed this up, would you?’

‘It’s not a friggin’ trip to the zoo, Sam,’ Dean said, but then Sam pulled out the puppy eyes and Dean just threw up his hands and walked away. ‘All right. You win. We’ll go. Least I probably won’t need my pencil-neck suit for this one.’

It would probably actually do them good, Dean thought. They hadn’t been on a hunt in a few weeks. Not because the hunts weren’t there to be had but because they didn’t meet Dean’s very specific criteria, to include relatively germ free areas which discounted rickety haunted houses and abandoned buildings full of mold and mildew, and a low to non-existent chance that either of them would be caught in a fire or fist fight or running for there lives.

The Trials were nearly two years behind them, but the docs had made it very clear on Sam’s release from the hospital, after a harrowing couple of touch and go months, that his immune system was shot to hell and would take a while to recover if it ever did. And his heart? Well, there was nothing going to fix that. Everyday wear and tear probably wouldn’t bother him, and he would still live a good long life, but the muscles had been damaged and any extra ordinary strain could have serious repercussions.

Dean had wanted to call it at that point, to just drop out of hunting all together, anything to keep Sam in one piece and healthy because hell be damned if he was watching his little brother suffer—for anything—ever again. He’d had a year full of that, and he honestly didn’t think he had the strength for it. Sam, though, had bitched and cajoled and compromised as only Sam could to get Dean to keep hunting because Dean would go bat-shit crazy (Sam’s words, not his) if he didn’t.

So, Bogeyman in Montana, okay fine. Not likely to be too much of a challenge since they were pretty harm less other than the scaring kids part. The hardest thing about hunting them was that they were basically invisible to adults until you shot them full of faery dust which was a pretty rare commodity these days. Except, of course, for a couple of hunters who had inherited the Men of Letters bunker and all the nifty inventory that came with it.

The thing Dean hadn’t banked on was the snot-nose kids. Literally.

January in Montana with snow and a Bogeyman meant talking to kids. Sick kids. Kids with runny noses who had colds or the flu or Strep or god-knew-what. Sam was never very good with kids, so talking to them usually fell to Dean which was fine. It wasn’t even the kid he wound up talking to who was the problem. It was the younger sibling who was looking feverish and sneezing every ninety seconds propped in the pile of beanbags in the corner who, for reasons unknown, Sam seemed inexplicably drawn to.

It hadn’t been lost on Dean how the nine-year-old (Kevin, wasn’t it?) in front of him kept darting his gaze nervously to his couldn’t be more than five-year-old sibling whom Sam was squatted down in front of and offering a box of tissues. It took all of Dean’s self-control not to grab Sam by the scruff of the neck and toss him back outside in the fresh, cold, _clean_ , winter air the third time the kid tried to hack up a lung without covering his mouth while Sam just handed him another tissue and rocked back on his heels until he landed—pretty gracefully—on his butt and folded his legs up under him.

Dean was struck then for just a second how young Sam suddenly looked, how like the fresh faced, naive kid he’s once been twenty years ago he still was, despite the five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw at three, until the kid curled up in front of him went into a coughing fit which got the immediate attention of Kevin whose time Dean was still commandeering. 

‘Sammy, you okay?’ Kevin asked.

Both grown man and child swung their heads to the side in unison, and Dean raised a surprised eyebrow.

‘You need some more medicine or some juice?’

The little guy nodded, and Kevin swung his anxious, slightly irritated gaze back to Dean. ‘Are we done here, Mister? ‘Cause my mom’s gotta be at work in twenty minutes, and I gotta get Sammy his dinner.’

‘Yeah. Sure, kid,’ Dean said, leaning back. ‘Just…call us if anything weird happens again.’

Kevin rolled his eyes, but it was a mock display, and Dean knew it from one too many uses of it himself over the years.

‘Look,’ Kevin said, keeping his eyes trained on his little brother whose back Sam was rubbing in  slow circles to help ease his coughing. The sweet gesture, even if a little tentative, struck a chord deep in Dean’s gut. Strummed a hundred memories of his own.  ‘I don’t believe in monsters under the bed or in the closets, and I wouldn’t’ve even talked to you except nothin’ I say or do can convince Sam. He’s spooked.’

‘And you want to help him,’ Dean said, gruff tone gone gentle.

Kevin tucked Dean’s card firmly in his jeans pocket. ‘Yeah.’

‘Then call me,’ Dean said. ‘Whenever. Got that?’

Kevin gave a definitive nod and slid off the stool to take his brother under his arm and lead him into the kitchen. 

‘Suppose they’re going to be alone tonight?’ Sam said, looking a little wistful and a little troubled over his shoulder at the front door where Kevin and Sammy’s mother stood giving last minute hurried instructions to Kevin before landing a kiss on his forehead and rushing off down the sidewalk.

‘Yeah, s’pose so,’ Dean replied, keeping his eyes carefully trained away from the scene. He felt bad for the kids, no doubt, but they did have a home and a mom who loved them even if she was frazzled and overworked; and she was only working down the block at the local grocery store. Not like she was across town getting drunk or threes states away fighting monsters with the very real chance of dying. He consoled himself with that, much the same way he figured Kevin probably did, even though deep down it was hardly enough.

‘So what was with you and that kid?’ Dean asked. ‘Weird him havin’ the same name, huh?’

‘Yeah, weird,’ Sam agreed absently, sliding into the passenger seat of the Impala. ‘Guess he just felt like a kindred spirit, ya know?’

Dean ignored the meaningful tilt of Sam’s chin in his direction and leaned over to rummage in the glove box and then tossed a bottle at Sam.

‘Hand sanitizer?’ Sam said a little incredulously.

‘Douse yourself,’ Dean directed. ‘That kid was coughing all over you. Kindred spirit or not. I don’t want you coming down with anything.

‘Dean, he probably just had a cold. Jesus! I’ll be fine.’ But Sam slathered the cold, antiseptic smelling goo on his hands anyway, knowing his brother wouldn’t be appeased until he did. 

As it turned out, Kevin did call the next morning, and Sam and Dean set up camp in the boys’ bedroom after their mom left for work, and going off of little Sammy’s timidly pointing finger and the direction of his wide, frightened gaze, they plugged themselves a Bogeyman full of faery dust and then banished it to the ‘other’ realm through a hastily constructed faery-ring in the middle of the bedroom floor. They stayed the rest of the night to keep watch from the car on the other side of the street and were met with styrofoam cups of hot chocolate early the next morning and Kevin’s grateful smile when he snuck out to tell them Sam had slept soundly the rest of the night.

Then came the innocuous sneeze.

It could have just been dust from the Impala’s heater, Dean told himself and tried not to flinch in apprehension and not to notice how Sam fell asleep pretty fast against the window on the way out of town or the slight pallor to his face that Dean swore hadn’t been there yesterday.

When he woke himself up toward late afternoon with a particularly ferocious trifecta of sneezes, Dean knew the jig was up.

‘Damn,’ Sam mumbled, holding a hand to his nose. ‘We got any tissues in here, Dean?’

Dean rummaged in yesterday’s take-out bags over the seat back and came up with a wad of napkins. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’ Sam blew his nose twice, and Dean cringed at the wet, mucousy sound. Sam looked at him sidelong and sighed. ‘Dean, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m fine. It’s just…allergies or something. We’ve been cooped up inside so much lately I’m just not used to the open air.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Dean muttered and changed hands on the steering wheel because that was what he did when he was nervous or irritated. It was kind of his way of shifting his weight from foot to foot while driving.

Sam just sighed in exasperation and tipped his head back against the seat and was asleep again in minutes.

Dean drove straight through and got them back to the bunker about ten o’clock that night. Sam was still asleep. Dean reached across to shake him awake and the backs of his knuckles brushed under Sam’s jaw.

‘Shit.’  Dean pressed the back of his hand to Sam’s cheek. It was hot. ‘Goddammit.’

He gave Sam a light shake and when he didn’t respond, a little harder one. ‘Sam? Come on, Sam, time to wake up. Allergies my ass.’

The last he muttered under his breath and patted Sam’s cheek to rouse him.

‘We home?’ Sam mumbled, finally coming around and lifting his head to look around, only to drop it back down as if the movement took too much effort.

‘Yeah, we’re home. Come on, we gotta get you into bed. Knew I shouldn’t’ve taken you out in the middle of damn winter to the middle of damn Montana.’

Dean got out and wrestled Sam out of the car and left their gear for later, never so grateful for the covered parking that doubled as a classic car museum under the bunker as he was right now.

‘’S hot, Dean,’ Sam complained, letting Dean manhandle him up against the side of the car to get his shoulders under Sam’s arm.

‘Ya think, genius? ‘Cause you’re runnin’ a damn fever.’

Dean steadied Sam back to his room and was only mildly relieved that he seemed to become at least a little more coherent as he woke up.

‘Dean, I’m okay,’ Sam protested as Dean deposited him on his bed and headed for the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. Hell, he thought, they must _really_ be turning into homebodies if he actually thought of the medicine cabinet first before reaching for a duffle to rifle for a first aid kit. He rolled his eyes as he pushed aside Sam’s collection of vitamins and their standard repertoire of wound treatment supplies to find what he was after.

‘Bingo.’ He went back to the bed to find Sam ineffectually tugging at his jacket trying to get it off. ‘Open up.’

Sam frowned, opening his mouth to ask why and Dean slid the thermometer home under Sam’s tongue to a spluttered half-choked protest. 

‘Now, leave that there. Sit still. I’ll be right back.’

——

Sam gave up trying to take off his jacket and slumped on the bed, wallowing the thermometer to a different spot under his tongue and watching Dean disappear through bleary eyes.

He should have known.

Ever since he was a kid every cold he’d ever had announced itself with the ‘ferocious three’ as he’d dubbed the fierce series of sequential sneezes that _always_ heralded the onset of illness. His second clue should have been sleeping nearly the entire way from Montana back to Kansas. He always slept like the dead when he was starting to get sick. It was like his body’s preemptive strike. Or premature surrender.

Dean reappeared with an entire armload of pill bottles. Sam couldn’t help his jaw going loose to hang open at the drug addicts’ dream come true, and the thermometer tumbled out to be caught by Dean’s lightening fast reflexes. He squinted at it.

‘Hundred point five, Sammy,’ he said, unloading the bottle on the nightstand. ‘You’re sick.’

Sam tried to shrug, but his shoulders felt heavier than normal and his neck was stiff. Probably from the awkward position he was sleeping in against the Impala’s window.

‘It’s a cold, Dean. I’ll _be_ okay.’

‘Yeah, ’s what you said about the stomach flu you had six months ago,’ Dean retorted, bending to loosen Sam’s bootlaces and tug them off and then sticking his hands under Sam’s jacket to push it off his shoulders and throw it across a chair.

‘Yeah, well, the stomach flu sucks no matter what. It wasn’t any worse than anyone else would get,’ Sam said. ‘And hang up my jacket.’

‘In a minute, Samantha.’ Dean started to work on Sam’s shirt buttons. ‘We need to get you in bed first. And you were throwing up _everything_ , Sam. Even water. For three days. I damn  near lost you to dehydration.’

Sam felt a flush creep up his cheeks at that, and it wasn’t just because of the fever. Dean had pretty much freaked out over that bout with the flu. Sam couldn’t remember much except strong, cool hands holding his hair back and keeping him steady with an iron grip around his chest while he dry heaved for what seemed like hours; wiping him down with a cool cloth; and alternately bundling him up to ward off the chill and stripping him down to cool off the sweats. When he finally came to, he found himself attached to an IV cobbled from parts out of the infirmary, Ziplock bags and duct tape, and Dean’s homemade version of saline solution. And Dean. By his bed. Pale, haggard, red-eyed, and looking way too much like he had the day Sam had finally woken up after the Trials.

Guilt had stabbed at him then and it did again now. Dean was going to worry, had _always_ worried, _would_ always worry; but he was going to do it even more now because, no matter how hard he worked, Sam just wasn’t getting back to his fighting strength. He had become…fragile.

‘Come on, Sam,’ Dean was saying. ‘Help me out here. Lift your arms up.’

Sam automatically obeyed, just like he’d done when he was five. Dean slipped a soft, worn t-shirt over his head. Sam recognized it was one of Dean’s favorites just from the feel. He felt a sudden unreasonable burn in his eyes at the realization that Dean remembered Sam always felt better wearing one of Dean’s shirts when he was sick, though he endlessly bitched about burning the damn things because of the germs once Sam was well. Except Sam couldn’t remember even the ones he’d thrown up in going to the burn pile.

Dean gently pushed him back on the pillows and began working at his bottom fly. Sam tried to bat his hands away.

‘Jesus, Dean, I’m not five.’

‘Just—shut up and let me,’ Dean said irritably, but there was a gruff tenderness in the tone of his voice. Sam quit struggling and let Dean tug off his jeans and replace them with flannel sleep pants before bundling him under the covers and tucking him in.

‘Now, let’s see what we’ve got here….’

Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and started shuffling the pill bottles around. Sam turned his head to watch through heavy lidded eyes and wished he hadn’t because there was the stiff line of tension running across Dean’s shoulders and up into his jaw causing the muscles to tick and jump.

‘Did you knock over a pharmacy or something, Dean?’ Sam tried to lighten the mood with a jab to his brother’s still heavy proclivity to five-finger-discount what they needed rather than pay for it even though Charlie had set them up for life with a steady cash flow.

Dean didn’t answer but the corner of his mouth hitched upward in the beginning of a smirk. Sam rolled his head back on the pillow and groaned.

‘Correction. You knocked over the _pharmacist._ ’

Dean still didn’t look at him, just popped the top on a bottle with a soft ‘ah-ha’ and dolled two pills out in his hand. Then Sam felt cool fingers sliding against the nape of his neck to tilt his head up and press the pills between his lips and then a glass of water. He didn’t bother asking what he was given. Dean had gotten his pharmaceutical skills from John and no one had died yet, just occasionally been really, really high.

Which would be okay with Sam right now because his head felt like it was slowly filling with wet concrete, and he could almost feel his back muscles looping themselves one by one in knots and getting ready to tighten down painfully at the moment he least expected.

‘Come on, one more and then you can go back to dreamland, Sleeping Beauty.’

Dean’s voice was coming from somewhere distant and Sam caught the scent of something sharp and syrupy under his nose before the sickly sweet mess was tipped down his throat and he swallowed convulsively .

‘That’s it, Sammy.’

Palm to his forehead, smoothing cool and calloused over his cheek.

‘Sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.’

Sam tried to resist, tried to mumble something about having slept all day, but the black curtain of slumber was closing fast at the edges of his vision and after one last struggle to turn his lips into Dean’s palm and mouth a soundless ‘thank you’ against his skin, he gave up to the weight and sank down with it into sleep.

——

Dean scooted his chair a couple inches closer to the bed and leaned back, crossing his arms and kicking his legs out. He’d been sitting for the better part of ten yours getting them from Montana, and his body was stiff and tired from the drive, and his eyelids were gritty from staring down the long strip of blacktop (Christ…could it be possible he was actually starting to get too old for this shit?) but there was no way he was going to leave Sam alone until he was sure the fever reducers were doing their job, and he was resting peacefully. He’d go to the kitchen a little later and be sure they had an ample supply of orange juice and tomato soup with rice. If they didn’t, he could always call Marty at the local store in town and ask him to send his kid up with a few supplies. Dean could spare the ten minutes it would take to meet the kid down the road, and he’d probably have to anyway because Sam would wake up demanding this prissy lotion tissues so his nose didn’t get any redder than it already was, and they’d run out about a month ago.

Dean leaned a little farther back in the chair to adjust his center of balance, tightened his arms and let his chin drop to his chest. He’d long ago learned the art of sleeping anywhere in practically any position without falling over, so he let his eyes slide closed and gave himself permission to doze a little.

The sound of a trash can scraping across the floor and teetering on its base and Sam retching hard brought Dean back to consciousness in .03 seconds. 

He was shifted to the edge of the bed and holding Sam’s forehead in his palm before his little brother could draw breath to start on round two. He cringed in sympathy as Sam’s whole body spasmed and locked up in its efforts to empty his stomach of nothing but a little acid and the medicine Dean had put down him an hour ago. Sam struggled for another breath before he heaved again, violently, knees knocking into the small of Dean’s back and fingers digging into the muscles of his thigh as he hung on to the only thing giving him any strength.

‘Fucking brilliant, Dean,’ Dean cursed himself as he readjusted his grip on Sam’s shoulder to hold him steady through another spasmodic round of retching. He hadn’t given a thought to the fact that Sam hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner before he dumped the medicine down his throat. Of course, he was going to throw it back up.

Sam shuddered once, tensed like he was going to heave again, but managed to drag in a deep, shaky breath and then another and then collapsed on the mattress, head hanging half off the edge. Dean let him lay there for a couple of minutes, supporting his head and stroking a hand down his back while he caught his breath, just to be sure he was finished.

‘Sam, I’m sorry. I should’ve thought…’ Dean apologized in an aching whisper.

Sam rolled his head in what was probably a denial and pushed back from the edge of the bed, flopping onto his side like the entire episode had cost him every reserve ounce of energy he had, and rolled his face into the pillow only to roll it back and grimace at the acrid smell on his breath.

‘’S all right,’ he mumbled, ‘but can I get a glass of water or something?’

‘Sure thing, Sammy.’

Dean came back five minutes later with a glass of cold water, some orange juice, a bowl of oyster crackers that he honestly couldn’t remember buying but the package had been sealed and they didn’t taste too stale, and a damp cloth to wipe Sam down with because it always felt good to be cleaned up after an episode of throwing your guts up.

When Dean rounded the door, he found Sam curled in on himself in the middle of the bed, huffing little pained whines and twitching every few seconds.

‘Sam?’ Dean deposited the tray on the nightstand and sat down on the bed, stomach tightening fiercely in worry at this new development. ‘Sammy?’ He splayed a hand on Sam’s back and his brother instinctively arched into it. ‘Hey, what’s wrong? Talk to me.’

‘Hurts,’ Sam huffed.

‘Where does it hurt?’

‘Everywhere,’ Sam whimpered and tucked into himself harder.

Dean skimmed his hands over Sam’s back and shoulders, up his neck, felt the hard knots and the muscles literally twitching under his palms.

‘Okay, lay out for me,’ Dean said , trying to coax Sam to unfurl. ‘Can you do that?’

‘Dean…hurts…’ Sam whined pitifully.

Dean’s gut twisted at the sound of little five-year-old Sammy in that proclamation, begging his big brother to fix whatever was wrong with him and make the pain go away.

It was a capacity Dean had filled all his life, curing the bumps and bruises, the aches and pains, the cuts and eventually the gashes and gouges, with ointment, bandages, gentle hands, soothing words, and a liberal number of hours of cuddling that Dean would strictly deny in public and only own up to under the pretense that it was what his little brother _needed_ to get well.

Dean pushed Sam over onto his stomach and pulled his arms and legs out straight to Sam’s whimpered protests and then leaned over him and dug his fingers hard into the knots all along Sam’s spine. Sam gasped and jerked and bit into the pillow to keep from crying out while Dean’s hands worked him over from the base of his skull to his tailbone and then down his arms and legs to the soles of his feet where Dean’s deft thumbs dug out the cramps that were assaulting even Sam’s toes.

By the time he was finished, Dean’s hands ached, but Sam was a loose, panting puddle on the sheets and was breathing easier and not twitching in pain, so it was worth it. He bent to pick up the thermometer from the table and slid it between Sam’s unresisting lips.

‘’Ank ‘ou,’ Sam mumbled around his mouthful.

‘You’re welcome, little brother,’ Dean said quietly, palming the back of Sam’s skull and sifting through his hair before drawing the thermometer back out. He frowned at it. ‘Hundred and one point eight. Sam, your fever’s going up. We’ve got to get this lowered.’

‘No more medicine,’ Sam begged weakly. ‘Please?’

Dean scrubbed a hand down his face. ‘We’ve gotta get something in you to get this fever under control, Sammy. Can you drink a little juice? Eat a few crackers? We’ll try a half dose this time. Somethin’s better than nothing,’ he said, the last more to himself than Sam.

After a long minute, Sam rolled onto his side and tried to prop himself up on his elbow so he could take the offered orange juice, but his hand was shaking too badly to hold the glass, and it was too much effort to stay upright. He dropped back into the pillow with a heavy breath.

‘Here.’ Dean shifted up the bed and situated himself against the headboard, then he drew Sam up against him, holding him against his side with his head on his shoulder.

‘Not five, Dean,’ Sam said, but there was no conviction in it as he turned slightly to push one arm behind Dean’s waist and the other hand came up to fist loosely in his brother’s shirt front.

‘Yeah, well, tough,’ Dean said, forcing the words out past the sudden hard lump in his throat at the feel of Sam tucked into his side, content and utterly trusting that his big brother could make it all better.

This, _this_ , had been missing during the Trials. Dean had been forced to watch from a distance that was not enough, being shoulder to shoulder with Sam but held at bay by his little brother’s stubborn drive and determination, while Sam broke himself piece by piece and crumbled and became so much leftover rubble of the man he was. Sam had stripped himself bare, let his own body turn on him and feed off of itself.

And he had denied Dean’s help at every turn.

He wouldn’t let Dean look after him in any way. He wouldn’t eat what he cooked, sleep when he asked/ordered/finally begged, take anything to ease his pain; but worst of all, Dean wasn’t allowed to touch him. Sam had shied from his touch, slipped his grip, shrunk from any contact of any kind right up until the very end when he’d nearly died in Dean’s arms in that church. Again.

Sam’s fingers were flexing restlessly in Dean’s shirt front now, and Dean carefully tipped the glass of juice to Sam’s lips. He took a couple of small swallows and then pulled back and turned his nose into Dean’s chest.

‘You know why I did it, don’t you?’ he whispered.

‘Did what? Dean asked, fishing out a few crackers from the bowl on the tray to feed Sam.

‘Wouldn’t let you touch me.’

Dean’s whole body fell still and silent, even his heart waited to beat. ‘You readin’ my mind again, Sam?’

Sam huffed a weak laugh. ‘No. After thirty years, if I can’t predict what you’re thinking, I don’t deserve to be your brother.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Dean whispered sharply, throat closing up around the words.

Sam burrowed a little closer. ‘I wouldn’t let you touch me because I knew the second you did, I would just give up. I wanted to, so badly, and if I let you touch me, offer your strength, let me lean on you like you always have, then I would just crumble and give in and ask you to take it all away and make it better. ‘Sam tipped his head back, eyes glinting and glassy with his rising fever. ‘And you would have. You always do.’

Dean swallowed thickly. ‘I just wanted to help you, Sammy. I was gonna let you do it, but I just wanted— _needed_ —to help you.’

‘I know you did, but I had to do it on my own. Had to prove that I could. For once in my life, I had to do something under my own power.’

Dean knocked his head back against the wall, swallowing down all the protests that wanted to come raging up and out of him: how that wasn’t what family was about—family was _supposed_ to help, _supposed_ to be there to lean on and offer strength; how Sam, no matter what he thought of himself, was still the strongest man Dean knew, and it was his privilege to be able to take care of him when he needed it.

Because it had stopped being Dean’s _job_ to take care of Sam the first time he had curled into Dean’s four-year-old chest and quieted after hours of crying when John’s efforts had all been futile. It had quit being his _job_ when Sam had taken his first tentative steps hanging onto Dean’s pinky fingers; when his first word came out in the shape of ‘Dee’ and not ‘Da.’ Taking care of Sam had never been just a job. It had been his life.

Dean threaded his hand into Sam’s hair and swallowed again with an audible dry click in the back of his throat.

‘And now?’

Sam’s fingers twined hard into Dean’s shirt and the arm around his waist tightened. ‘Now, I know I was wrong. I know how much it hurt you to watch, and I’m-I’m so sorry, Dean.’

Dean let out a long breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and dropped his lips to press against the top of Sam’s head.

‘Aww, Sam…’ he breathed and wrapped an arm around his brother’s trembling shoulders. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you now, and I _am_ going to make it all right.’

Sam sniffed and nodded weakly.

Dean ruffled his hair lightly, ‘Now, drink your juice, Samantha, and eat some crackers, so I can drug you right this time.’

Sam smiled tiredly and sipped at the juice Dean offered him again and let his brother hand feed him one cracker at a time like he was coaxing a wild baby animal to eat from his palm. When he was nearly asleep again and more orange juice was dribbling from the corner of his mouth than down his throat, and he had to be reminded to chew, Dean gave up and pressed another pill into his mouth with one good swallow of juice and then let him drift off to sleep entirely.

——

Sam’s first thought when he woke next was that he had somehow fallen back into Hell.

He tried to move, but his limbs felt leaden and weighted down, and his skin felt like it was being ripped off in swaths with every scrape against the sheets, and his brain was boiling between his ears. He was so afraid his eyeballs would pop out from the pressure behind them that he refused to open them. He worked his tongue to try and make a sound, but it stuck to his teeth and the roof of his mouth and felt rubbery and too big.

‘Dee….’ He moaned the name pathetically, more a slur of sound than any distinct syllable. Dean would understand, though. He would understand and come save him from this nightmare. He always did.

Always.

‘Dee….’

Icy fingertips touched his cheek and he flinched from the sharp cold and shivered.

‘Sam? Sammy, you with me? Come on, Sam, stay with me here. Just—give me a minute. The water’s almost ready.’

Water? What water? Sam tried to make his mouth work to ask but only got a sharp sting across his bottom lip and the wet, acrid taste of copper in his mouth. He licked at the cut on his lip with the tip of his tongue. Frigid cold rubbed across the cut a moment later, numbing it and water trickled past his cracked, dry lips. He swallowed convulsively as it ran down his parched, abraded throat. He felt like he’d been shouting, screaming at the top of his lungs.

‘Dean…?’

‘Sammy?’

Sam started to register the shaky relief in his brother’s voice and wondered what had happened to cause him to sound so worried. He tried to turn his head, to move himself in the direction of Dean’s voice, but his skin scraped on the sheets and felt too tight around his bones and he cried out. It was a hoarse, pathetic, mewling sound.

‘Don’t move, Sam,’ Dean said urgently, freezing cold hands skating across Sam’s chest and shoulders and arms. Sam shivered again. Violently. ‘Christ. Don’t move. Just stay still. I’m gonna check the water. I’ll be back in just a second, Sam. One second. Don’t you leave me.’

 _Dean? Don’t go…._ But Sam couldn’t make his mouth form the worlds, and he couldn’t get his eyes to open, and he couldn’t get his throat to stop making that horrible pained keening that sounded like a wild animal dying. He was dying. He must be dying. That’s why Dean’ was so freaked out.

‘Heya, Sammy,’ 

No.

‘Long time no see, buddy.’

No, no, no.

Nononono!

Sam squeezed his eyes closed and forced a horrible gurgling cry from his throat. Dean had to come. He had to come back. He would make it better. He would make _him_ go away. Because Sam knew that voice. Oh, he knew it. So well.

‘Aww, come on, Sam. It’s not so bad. Didn’t you miss me? Even a little?’

Sam tried not to hear, tried to will himself deaf to that awful, familiar voice. He fisted his left had, tried to dig his blunt nails into the old ridge of scar tissue, tried to remind himself of the pain.

‘Oh, Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. I thought we got past this a long time ago. You _know_ that’s not going to work.’

Sam dug his nails in harder, thrashed his head on the pillow and whimpered as muscles tore and skin scraped and cracked and bled with every movement. At least that’s what it felt like.

‘Sa-am,’ the voice continued, closer, all singsongy. ‘You should know you can’t get rid of _me_. I’m with you for life.’ The voice was right on top of him, right in his ear. Sam’s eyes shot wide in time to see a long pointed finger drive into his chest, icy and sharp, straight through his heart.

‘Right, _here_. Forever.’

Sam opened his mouth and screamed.

——

Dean bolted back down the hall as Sam’s scream reverberated off the walls and found him convulsing on the bed, legs tangled in the thin sheet that covered his all but naked body except for his damp boxers that were stuck to his skin with sweat, arms flailing wildly above him like he was trying to throw something off of him.

He grabbed Sam’s shoulders and pinned him to the bed. ‘Sammy! Sam!’

‘H-He’s here…he’s here!’ Sam choked out, still bucking against Dean’s grip.

Dean didn’t have to ask who _he_ was. Sam’s wide open, terrified gaze said it all. He leaned across Sam’s chest, keeping him weighted to the bed and took his face between his hands and tried to force Sam’s vacant, petrified gaze down to meet his own.

‘Shh. He’s not, Sammy. I swear he’s not. You’re just hallucinating. Your fever’s too high. We’ve got to get it down, okay?’

Sam was still staring into the space behind Dean’s right ear, eyes wide and mouth round in a silent scream. He thumbed Sam’s cheekbones, bent close enough so that only his face could fill Sam’s vision, and whispered fiercely,

‘You stay here with me, Sam. Don’t you _dare_ leave me. I’m gonna take care of you. I promise.’

Sam squeezed his eyes shut in answer and turned his face into Dean’s neck. Dean slid an arm under Sam’s shoulders and then under the backs of his knees and hefted upward. He knew his back was going to make him pay for this stunt for at least a week, but Sam was in no condition to try and walk down the hall and Dean needed to get him into a cool bath fast.

He’s laid down next to Sam on the bed last night to keep an eye on him and get a little sleep himself, and he was surprised when he woke up a full six hours later, and Sam hadn’t so much as moved a muscle. He was about to count his lucky stars and let the kid sleep, but when he’d laid the back of his hand against Sam’s dry, hot cheek to check his temperature and jerked back from the sting of heat he’d known something was wrong. When he couldn’t rouse Sam to get him to take the thermometer, he knew something was _very_ wrong.

He’d shoved the thermometer past Sam’s teeth and watched it shoot up past one hundred and two, three, when it didn’t stop at four, Dean jerked it from his mouth and stripped the covers from the bed, the t-shirt and sleep pants from Sam’s body, and then ran down the hall to start a tub full of warm water going.

Finding Sam wrestling with his mind’s own recreation of Lucifer on the bed was the last straw.

Dean jostled Sam’s gangly body, trying to get a better grip as he hauled him sideways through the bathroom door. The kid had at least thirty pounds on him even after having lost so much during the Trials and every licking bit of it was dense muscle mass. Kid didn’t have an ounce of fat anywhere on him to spare which should actually help in getting him cooled down faster. He lowered Sam to the tub edge as carefully as he could and paused for a second to get his breath back. Sam was still moaning against his shoulder which meant he was still partly conscious. He put his hand in the water to test it again. It was just comfortably warm to him, but he knew as hot as Sam was it was going to feel frigid. He really wished there was some easier way to do this. Sam wasn’t fond of baths, wasn’t fond of being bodily submerged in water of any kind, not since he was about thirteen and that Kelpie had pulled him under that frozen lake in Wisconsin. 

By rights the thing should have been hibernating because of the cold, so it had taken the three of them by surprise. Dean had shucked his boots and jacket and gone in after Sam with his silver knife between his teeth before John could even open his mouth to protest. Dean had sliced the thing clean in two and gotten Sam to the surface where John had kept the ice from freezing over and hauled them both out breathless and heaving onto the ice.

He’d actually flipped for a decent hotel room that night, cranked the heat on high and disappeared to the bar on the corner to deal in his own way with nearly losing his youngest son to a watery grave, leaving Dean to deal with getting his little brother through a hot shower that nearly dried out the hotel’s supply because Sam refused a bath, and it took nearly an hour of the hot water sluicing over his bony shoulders and Dean finally standing under the spray with him and holding him tight while the shivers—which Dean had suspected had nothing to do with the cold—subsided.

The last time Dean had been forced to put Sam in the water was during the Trials when he’d found him collapsed on the motel room floor spiking a fever over one hundred and eight that by rights should have left him a vegetable; and seeing as how that didn’t kill him, the shock to his system of Dean dumping him in a tubful of ice certainly should have, but he’d just come out of the tub ten minutes later like a pissed off mountain cat, spluttering and cursing and shoving Dean and telling him to get his goddamn hands off and don’t touch him, don’t help him, just leave him the fuck alone.

He really hoped things went a little better this time.

‘Sam? Can you hear me? I’m gonna put you in the water now. I need you to put your arms around my neck, okay?’

Sam whimpered and wallowed his head against Dean’s shoulder. ‘Don’t want a bath, Dee.’

‘I know, I know you don’t,’ Dean soothed. ‘But we’ve got to get this fever down, and this is the fastest way. So, come on now, give me a little help here, huh?’

Sam’s arms reluctantly moved to wrap around Dean’ neck and folded there securely. Dean looped an arm around Sam’s back and used the other to swing his legs up and over the edge of the tub and let them down into  the water slowly. The second his toes touched the water, though, Sam reared back, knees coming up to his chest, trying to draw back from the cold and wet.

He shivered convulsively. ‘C-Cold, Dean!’

‘I know, little brother,’ Dean said as he tried again to let Sam’s feet down. ‘I know it feels cold, but it really isn’t, Sam. It’s just that you’re so hot. So, please, I need you to get in the tub.’

‘Don’t wanna.’

Sam shook his head and buried his face against Dean’s neck and hell if it didn’t just tear at Dean’s heart that the kid sounded all of six again and whiny because he was sick and tired and hurting.

He took a deep breath, let it out slow and a little shaky, not because he was frustrated with his little brother, but because he needed to steady his racing heart, because every second Sam stayed out of the water was a second longer the fever had to win this fight and take his little brother away from him. So, Dean played dirty and tucked his mouth down close to Sam’s ear and whispered to him, letting all the fear and worry and strain come out in his ruined voice for just one second,

‘Please, baby brother. Please. For me. Do it for me. Because, dammit, Sammy…I can’t lose you like this.’

One long held breath later, Sam’s body relaxed against Dean, and he let his feet down into the water. He whimpered and whined and keened against Dean’s throat, arms tightening impossibly around his neck as Dean let him down inch by slow inch and the water level crawled up his back and chest.

He tried hard not the hyperventilate. Dean could feel it in the hard stubborn set of his jaw against his shoulder, but as the water crept up under Sam’s armpits, his breaths started coming ragged and short irregardless of the endless litany of soft comforting nonsense Dean kept whispering to him.

Finally, Sam was sitting in the bottom of the tub, but his arms were strangling Dean’s neck, and he was shivering with cold and shaking with fear, and he was starting to wheeze; and then he was actually gulping for air and _dammit to hell_ …. Dean wrenched Sam’s arms from around his neck, stripped down to his boxers and swung himself over the edge of the tub and slid down into the water to pull Sam back against his chest and cradle him with a hand over his heart, all before Sam could draw breath enough to sob out Dean’s name one more time. 

‘I gotcha, Sam. I gotcha. Just breathe for me. Just breathe.’

Sam’s rabbiting heart finally slowed and his fingers unlocked from the edge of the tub, and he let Dean hold him securely with an arm tight around his chest, the other hand on his forehead keeping his head up out of the water.

Dean lost track of the time. He tipped his head back against the tub’s edge and stared at the ceiling while his own heart slowed to a more reasonable rate and somehow found its pace in the rhythm of Sam’s that he could feel through his little brother’s back where they were pressed together, and he knew—just knew—that so long as they had _this,_ so long as they could still keep count of life by each other’s heartbeats, then everything else would fall into place.

——

Dean was snoring.

That was Sam’s first clue that everything was all right because if he were dead and in Hell Dean wouldn’t be there, and if it were Heaven he wouldn’t be snoring because in Sam’s Heaven Dean didn’t snore like a fleet of lumberjacks working their way through the great Redwood forest, and if Sam were still in danger of dying, Dean wouldn’t be asleep.

So Dean snoring was a good thing.

Sam came awake incrementally, taking stock of his gluey eyeballs and sour mouth, his all over aching body—but the good kind of ache, the empty-at-the-end-of-the-marathon kind of ache, the I-may-have-come-in-last-but-I-still-finished ache that really let a person feel their own bones and know they were alive. Then there was the heavy arm flung across his stomach and the warm body pressed close enough for him to feel the rumble of Dean’s snores reverberating in his own chest.

He could open his eyes and turn his head and wake Dean to let him know he was okay, but there really didn’t seem to be a point. Sam felt—not good—but alive at least, and safe and warm. Dean was probably going to have a bitch-fit when Sam woke up next over putting him through the biggest chick-flick moment of all time because snatches of memory were starting to leak back into Sam’s consciousness from the last twenty-four hours, and yeah, it was going to be awhile before Dean let this one go.

But hey, they got to gank a real Bogeyman, and in his sleep Dean inched closer, arm threading tighter around Sam’s middle, and Sam turned into his brother’s side and settled his hand over Dean’s slow, steady heart beat thudding behind his ribs and let it lull him back toward sleep.

Bogeyman in Montana in January that ended with Dean tucked up against Sam, sleeping, both of them all warm and alive and—well—mostly well? 

Yeah, that was a win.


End file.
